


Airhead

by Loudest_Voice



Category: Naruto
Genre: ANBU - Freeform, College AU - Ninja Post-Apocalyptic World Version, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Humor, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, M/M, Mission Fic, Ninja Politics, Orphans, Puberty, Root - Freeform, self-indulgence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-29
Updated: 2016-03-27
Packaged: 2018-05-23 17:58:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 9,368
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6125215
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Loudest_Voice/pseuds/Loudest_Voice
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Chapter Infinity of the book "Eiji Hates Himself", verse "Are you serious?" starts when he has a wet dream about Uchiha Itachi dumping a mountain of paperwork on him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Uh . . . I haven't forgotten about my other WIP. And besides, I'm only doing one-shots as much as humanly possible now. I'll learn to write endings if it's the last thing I do.
> 
> Direct sequel to [this story](http://archiveofourown.org/works/397304) that I wrote back in undergrad.

The bastard shouldn't be allowed to wear a high ponytail. As far as Eiji's concerned, that's what starts the whole mess. _Not_ that terrifying episode when . . . yeah, better not think about it. He doesn't see Captain Crow until a week after that anyway. Itachi corners him at the ANBU locker room showers because, probably, he doesn't guess that most men feel vulnerable when they're a stitch away from naked.

"I want to thank you for . . . helping me, the other day," Itachi says, looking up at Eiji so intent on keeping eye-contact that he doesn't notice that Eiji is trying really hard to melt into the grimy, athlete's foot-infested floor.

"Sure, Captain," says Eiji. "What else am I here for?"

"Field support," says Itachi.

"Right, right," says Eiji, waving a hand vaguely.

"And I also want to apologize if I made you feel uncomfortable."

Eiji would actually call having Itachi press a kunai to his throat "pants-shittingly terrifying", but who's gonna argue semantics. Besides, he's proud of how much he didn't wet his pants when it happened. "It's in the past," he says, then adds a little awkward hum that screams how uncomfortable he is right now.

"I understand if you want to make a formal complaint about my behavior," says Itachi.

"A what?" Eiji startles. "To who? About what?"

Itachi tilts his head. "You know. When I propositioned you?"

Does he even go here? "Yeah, what's that gonna do besides make _me_ look like an asshole?"

Itachi opens his mouth, but a group of ANBU walks in chatting among themselves. Eiji leaps back from Itachi, not that they'd been standing that close to each other, and the idle conversation dies.

"Hi guys!" says Eiji. "Nothing's happening here."

It's three other captains, which Eiji decides is somehow a good thing. The one in the middle rolls his eyes, at least until he realizes that it's _Itachi_ that's doing fuck-knows-what with Eiji in the locker room. Then all three of them just stare until Itachi, paragon of tact that he is, leans a towards Eiji and says in a soft voice, "regardless, I want you to know I won't bother you again," before leaving the locker room.

Eiji almost follows him before remembering he'd been about to shower and is thus half-wet, and in his underwear. He sighs, then smirks at the stunned captains. "He had a painful burning sensation."

That night, he has _another_ dream, this time in the nasty ANBU showers. Itachi's standing before him, saying something that's drawn out by the shower-heads, then he's got his legs wrapped around Eiji's waist and his mouth is attacking Eiji's lips. The feelings are muted, as they are in all dreams, but Eiji knows how much Itachi weighs now so the dream is too vivid and too _real_.

He wakes up somewhere between aroused, mortified, and _scared_ because this is Konoha's most fearsome ninja, not just a weird coworker that Eiji has the hots despite not really liking him all that much. "I'm so fucked," he mumbles to himself, wondering how exactly he landed on Itachi's radar.

Confirmation about the fucked-upness of his life comes later that week at that new Water-country style restaurant that's taking Konoha by storm. Eiji's having a lunch break with Kai, A. K. A. Butterfly, fellow medic-trainee and ANBU candidate/recruit/whatever it's called when you're technically ANBU on a part-time basis because the hospital is running on a skeleton crew twenty-four/seven. Eiji's not sure what the brass is gonna do about the medic shortage in Konoha; he's just glad it's not his problem.

"What's this rumor about you and Itachi?" Kai asks without preamble.

Exercising a degree of control that would've made his Academy Infiltration Instructor proud, Eiji responds with a careless shrug. "You know how many rumors there are about me." He never should have let that genin tell her boyfriend she was cheating with him because it's all it took for the village to remember that Eiji's mom was a smack junkie at the Red Lights district, so clearly Eiji has whoring in the blood.

"Sure, there're rumors," says Kai, "but not about you and Itachi _together_. He has his own rumors."

Eiji bites down on his sandwich--just what the hell do they put on this sauce?--then rolls his eyes at Kai. She's fixed a knowing gaze on him, but he's not letting this Itachi thing get to him anymore. "I can't control what people say, you know that."

But Kai's not falling for it. "Eiji, he's dangerous."

"Look, I have to get back," he says because . . . well, there's not much he _can_ say, is there? "Jian's gonna have my balls if I'm late for another shift."

Jian chews him out for being slow anyway, ranting that he doesn't care if Eiji can't be bothered to train or read or even give a shit, there's no need to spend close to an hour on some random lady's arthritic knee since there's nothing to be done for that kind of chronic shit anyway.

Maybe not, but Eiji knows he's particularly shitty at dealing with joints infiltrated with bone spurs and inflamed fluid. He's certainly not as good as Jian, who manages to give people relief no matter how much he pretends that it's all pointless. _I should just read the damned textbooks,_ he thinks as he heads to his small apartment, memories of that old woman's teary eyes haunting him.

Of course, there's a missive from ANBU waiting for him. Captain fucking Crow has requested him for a mission, and Eiji decides that the world must be playing a prank on him as his eyes scan down the debrief. Some rich merchant from one of the cities neighboring Konoha wants his son rescued from a "sex club".

Eiji couldn't come up with this shit if he tried.

As usual, he barely gets enough time to shower before he has to be at ANBU Headquarters. He finds a Yamanaka kunoichi waiting for Itachi, looking like a fantasy even though she's wearing standard jounin gear. Normally, such a woman wouldn't even glance Eiji's way, but he's too tired and . . . he's just tired.

"This sounds kinda stupid, you know?" he tells her with a yawn. "Why do you think they're deploying Itachi for it?"

The kunoichi shrugs. Eiji doesn't try to engage her in conversation again, choosing to lay his head down for a quick power nap instead.

Next thing he knows, Itachi's shaking his shoulder and the kunoichi is gazing at him with distaste, probably because what kind of ninja passes out before a mission even starts, for fuck's sake? Well . . . fuck her. It's not like Eiji wants deal with this nonsense.

"Did you read the debrief?" asks Itachi.

Fuck him too. "Yeah. What do you need _me_ for?"

"The objective will probably need healing," says Itachi.

"What about you?" asks Eiji. "Since when do you go on this type of milk run?"

"Ibiki thinks this particular establishment is one of Orochimaru's drug dens," says Itachi.

Somehow, the kunoichi manages to straighten up further in her chair, glancing at Eiji with even more naked trepidation. Eiji shrugs at her and gestures at Itachi. "He chose me because I'm his favorite."

It turns out the woman is Yamanaka Saori, expert on infiltration and honey-trapping, coming along because she's made a career of playing the "submissive" and it turns out the objective is "staying" with some creepy old dude "dominant". She would take over as a conquest for said creepazoid, but it turns out he's strictly into men, and specifically into swinging and threesomes. Reason number two why they need Eiji, apparently. What is his life?

The trip takes twenty-four hours. Itachi allows one break because Eiji can't keep up, and because they need to plan out their cover for the "sex club", which Saori says is just a bar with more than one floor. There's no moon to light their way either, though Eiji doubts it's bothering the other two. He half-listens while Saori explains that Itachi should play one of the many dumb pretty boy bastards of the samurai clans in Fire Country and Eiji should be the big, dangerous conman enjoying the brat's streak of homosexual rebellion or something.

"First of all," says Saori, "there's a set hierarchy in these types of places, established mostly by non-verbal cues, so the way you carry yourselves will be more important than anything you say."

Eiji suppresses an eye roll. It's just people trying to get laid; how hard can it be? "Fine, I'll just do whatever Itachi says without argument." He doesn't remember ever feeling less up to sass anyway.

Saori looks like she wants to argue, but Itachi silences her with a gesture. "He doesn't need to act much considering he already looks like a thug." A man after Eiji's own heart.

"No offense, sir," says the Saori, and Eiji is too exhausted to look for sarcasm on that 'sir', "but I don't think _either_ of you can pull this off."

And Eiji's not sure how it happens, but Itachi's next too him all of a sudden, loose-limbed and draped on his side. He wraps an arm around Itachi's waist because it looked like Itachi had been about to fall--playing drunk, Eiji realizes--and then Itachi gazes at him with a loopy smile.

"Oh, whoops!" Itachi lets out a half chuckle-half giggle.

Eiji ignores the corner of his mind that's having a seizure and gets with the program. He beams down at Itachi, kisses him and pulls him closer. "Don't worry, baby," he murmurs. "I got you."

Just as quickly, Itachi pulls back and rounds on Saori. "Satisfied?" he asks in his normal, dead tone.

So next evening, Eiji dons a tight black T-shirt over denim that manages to be more obscene than mesh, maybe because he's used to mesh. They can't risk looking at all like ninja though, nevermind that they couldn't find denim pants long enough so Eiji's calves are naked. He's whining to himself about how cold it's going to be when Itachi walks into the room. Saori had helped dress him up because the universe is out to get Eiji.

The outfit is simple enough--a white wife beater and black pants--but Saori's done his hair up in a pony-tail, dyed the tips of his bangs red and lined his eyes with dark kohl.

"Any questions?" asks Itachi.

"No."

"You look constipated," insists Itachi. "If you're ill, I can do this on my own."

Eiji allows a tired sigh before he forces a bright grin and wraps an arm over Itachi's shoulders. "Would I miss the chance of watching you act like a dumbass?"

Saori sighs heavily. Eiji didn't even notice her walking in. "Remember, you're supposed to be madly in love, but hurting for money."

It's easy enough to spend the evening draped over Itachi because it's colder than Eiji expected and the bastard is using chakra to turn his body into a furnace. "Why aren't you using your own chakra to keep yourself warm?" Itachi asks at the club. For the whole world, it looks like he only has eyes for Eiji, but Eiji bets that he's got every possible exit on mental lock, if not visual.

"Cause I don't know how yet," he whispers into Itachi's ear, knowing it'll look like he's fooling around with a lover instead of complaining. He kisses behind Itachi's ear for good measure.

"You're supposed to have excellent chakra control," says Itachi burrowing closer.

"Yeah, yeah," mumbles Eiji. "Maybe I'll be better than you when my training's over."

Itachi snorts. "Don't flatter yourself. Maybe it'll be better than average."

 _It's already better than average._ Eiji doesn't bother saying that. He follows Itachi, who acts like he's already stumbling drunk, to a counter. Itachi orders the most expensive drink on the menu and Eiji loudly admonishes him about their lack of funds.

"You'll get us more money," Itachi tells him, obliviously happy for anyone who'll listen.

A few rounds of dirty dancing and giggles later, a hulk of a man wearing an eye-patch tells them they've been invited "upstairs", where all the drug deals happen. At least according to Saori. Eiji doesn't need to get into character to regard Eye-patch Man with distaste.

"Come on, Eiji," insists Itachi. "You promised you'd show me the whole, wide world."

So Eiji goes upstairs without complaints. It's too disturbing to hear Itachi talking like that. Eyepatch disappears in a way that would be smooth if they weren't ninja, leaving them in a throng of sweaty bodies swaying to some crappy music.

"Stop looking so miserable; you're scaring everyone away." Itachi follows it with a laugh, but Eiji can tell he's annoyed.

Again, he can go fuck himself as far as Eiji's concerned. He hates places like this; hates the crappy music, the flashing of garish lights, the stink of sweat, smoke, and urine, the sight of idiots blissed out of drugs and the assholes taking advantage of them.

"I'm serious," says Itachi, throwing his arms over Eiji's neck. "Go back to the motel if you can't be bothered to at least _try_ and look carefree."

Eiji glares, grunts, and then whirls them around so Itachi's back is to a wall. His instincts grate at the thought of having so many potential hostiles at his back, but he figures he's as safe as can be considering what Itachi can do.

"The whole point is to make this guy think we're sluts, right?" He doesn't wait for Itachi to answer before diving down to kiss him. Or rather claim his lips, to keep the dumb romance thriller air this whole mission has going for it.

Although, he doesn't have much experience kissing, and he knows for a fact that neither does Itachi. They'll not make a pretty picture because there's a skill to making any part of sex look good. A skill that Itachi must have been practicing, it turns out.

The kiss turns liquid. Itachi sighs and stands on his toes, forcing Eiji to bend down until his neck strains. Itachi lets go of his mouth and attacks his neck, sucking on that dip between his clavicles. Shit, Eiji's supposed to know what that's called. He bends down, tells Itachi that he's gonna slip a hand under his shirt as if the entire situation isn't awkward as shit enough as it is, and bites his earlobe. Itachi grunts, in annoyance, probably, but anyone listening will assume it's because he's having fun.

His belly is warmer, or maybe it just feels that way. Eiji hesitates the closer he gets to where his nipples might be even though he doesn't have any delusions that Itachi would go all nervous-debutante on him. In fact, Itachi maneuvers them so Eiji's leg slips between his thighs.

It's just as good that someone clears their throat behind Eiji. He's pretty sure he'd have burst a blood vessel if Itachi started dry-humping him in public, mission or not.

"It looks like you boys could use a more private setting," says a man who's probably been smoking as long as Eiji's been alive.

Itachi lets out a disturbing whine when Eiji lets go of him--right, he's supposed to be playing the protective boyfriend. "Who're you?" he demands as he turns around, trying not to smirk at the way Itachi uses his body for cover. Despite everything, it's thrilling that he might be the only person in the room with any idea of what Itachi is capable of.

"I'm Lord Tohru," says the man.

Eiji recognizes him as the guy in the debrief immediately. Even if he's not working with Orochimaru, he's a creep anyway. Tohru is old enough to be his grandfather, yet he's got more gel slicking his thinning hair than Eiji would let anywhere near his head.

"I'm the owner of this humble establishment," says Tohru. "If you boys would like, I'll let you have a look-see at the most exclusive part. What do you say?"

"Why not, Eiji?" says Itachi. "Let's go see."


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't look at me, I got this multiple WIPs situation under control.

With Itachi playing the giggly school boy who blushes at the slightest innuendo, it doesn’t take long to maneuver and invitation to Tohru’s “private quarters”, where Tohru promises to introduce them to a boy of “similar background”. Of course, Itachi demands that Eiji come along, otherwise he’ll be too scared. Right up until Eiji kicks the door to Tohru’s tacky bedroom close, Itachi is attached to his arm like a dizzy limpet. Then, as Tohru turns around to look through a drawer, Itachi adopts his standard, mechanical smoothness and gestures Eiji towards a mess of blankets over a soft-looking futon.

“The things you young ones never imagine,” says Tohru.

Eiji spots the body nestled in the soft-lavender-pinkish blankets. He guesses he sees the resemblance to Itachi, if Itachi lost all his muscle, twenty pounds or so on top of it, and then stopped going out to the sun until his skin was so thin and pale that his veins formed tiny blue spiderwebs over his jutting bones. Jeez, Eiji can count those ribs even though he sees no needle tracks. Just how much smack does this kid snort?

“What--”

Tohru’s voice dissolves into that scream that Eiji associates with Itachi’s nasty genjutsus; a raw, aching sound that scratches throats and makes heartbeats jump. Eiji likes it better when Itachi’s victims are rendered mute with terror. He bends down, checks the kid’s pulse, tries to open his eyelids to check for his pupillary reflexes. Pinpricks, predictably. Tohru’s scream finishes with an abrupt, choking sound.

“Eiji?” calls Itachi. He never sounds that confused.

Eiji glances towards Tohru as the man stumbles, right hand cradling his left arm. “Come on,” Eiji grunts under his breath, rushing to Tohru’s side. “You have heart problems?” he asks, but Tohru’s already lost consciousness. Eiji places a hand over the man’s chest, pushes chakra past his sternum, and . . . yeah. That just happened. Tohru’s heart is not beating.

“What’s wrong?” asks Itachi.

“You gave him a heart attack. Or probably a fatal arrhythmia.”

“What? How?” protests Itachi. “I haven’t done anything yet.”

Eiji ignores him. He tries to take over Tohru’s heart, to force it into the coordinated pumping of a healthy one, but it’s a flabby mess with fried electrical cells. Not that Eiji could do something like that with a healthy heart even. “This guy had heart problems to begin with and then you come and put the fear of hell into him . . .”

“Can you fix it?”

“No, Itachi, I can’t fix _death_ ,” says Eiji, sighing in disgust. “But at least we got the mark, yeah?”

“The mark is secondary,” snaps Itachi. Maybe he’s been in character too long because his frustrations are usually not so obvious.”I needed to question that imbecile.”

“Well, on the bright side, you have literally frightened someone to death” says Eiji, going back to the futon. The mark lies oblivious, blissed out of his mind. “It’ll add to your mystique.”

“Of all the nonsense . . .” He trails off, takes a calming breath.

Eiji bet anyone else would walk over to Tohru’s corpse and kick it, but Itachi just glares between it and the body on the bed.

“Wake that one up,” orders Itachi.

“Oh, come on, you’re not gonna torture some stupid junkie,” Eiji tries.

“I said wake him up.”

A huff is all Eiji can get away with. He reaches into his pocket for the lone needle he brought, loaded with a dose of anti-opiates that he’d been hoping not to need. “You’re gonna get a minute out of this, at most,” says Eiji. The kid’s name is Souza, he remembers as he the needle pierces thin skin. Souza, who likes warm milk with honey. A random-ass detail for a report, but there it’d been.

Souza wakes relatively slowly, coughing at first, then groaning and pushing at Eiji weakly. “Bastard . . .”

“Maybe less,” amends Eiji.

Itachi’s by the futon in an instant, fist wrapped in Souza’s dark hair. Souza’s eyes widen, more fearful than pained. Eiji doubts Itachi is gripping hard enough to cut through the smack.

“Scream,” orders Itachi.

The kid’s got quite the lungs on him, but Eiji doesn’t see the point. Who’s gonna care that some junkie whore is possibly getting beat? He’s about to tell Itachi as much, but apparently someone does care. The same hulk who’d ushered them from the first floors bursts through the door as if hounds are on his heels.

Souza’s scream is cut short and Eiji takes the opportunity to knock him out, figuring the kid’s probably fried his brain with the heroin anyway.

Itachi flickers to the hulk’s side. The man tries to punch him. Itachi grabs his forearm and, next instant, the hulk’s on his knees, arm twisted at an unnatural angle. He doesn’t quite shout, but the pain is obvious on his brow. Itachi rolls his eyes, looking towards Eiji with naked annoyance in his gaze.

 _Can you believe this?_ Eiji almost hears in Itachi’s fake airhead voice. _I only dislocated his shoulder_.

“My brother!” says the guy.

“Dead,” says Itachi.

“How could you--”

Itachi twists the dislocated shoulder, and the retort twists into a pained howl.

“Spare me the theatrics,” says Itachi. “You know what he was. Now, about your brother’s dealings with shinobi.”

* * *

 

“Crow’s latest mission report is gonna be a classic,” Kai says the next time they meet at Eiji’s shitty studio a block away from the Red Lights district.

Eiji could afford something better by now, but he like it or not, he’s home. Most of the kids he grew up with joined the family business, and Eiji knows it makes them feel better that a bona-fide real ANBU shinobi is kinda-sorta on their side. One who can heal wounds and doesn’t ask questions about the ones in or around the groin.

Eiji’s been back for two days, and he has yet to crack open a scroll or textbook. Every time Jian asks him a question that’s even remotely academic, he pisses his pants a little.

“You two played boyfriends.”

“That’s what people are talking about?” Eiji groans, decides to ignore the pile of dishes on his tiny sink because it’s not like anything stinks yet. He shambles to the couch and throws himself on it beside Kai. “Did he not write that Orochimaru’s smuggling drugs in honest-to-fuck cock cages?”

“It was a BDSM club,” says Kai, tucking blue locks behind her ear.

“It wasn’t; it was a regular shitty bar.” Eiji snorts. “He killed someone purely with genjutsu, and I mean never laid a finger on the motherfucker.”

“He handpicked you for that mission, you know,” says Kai. “Could’ve picked almost any ninja in the village, but he chose _you_ for the BDSM mission.”

“I told you.” Maybe it’d be better to drop this before Kai gets any more stupid ideas. “You know when you get a debrief promising the baddest missing-nin this side of hell, and it turns out to be some asshole who thinks he’s a shinobi because he talked back to a samurai once and learned to twirl a kunai without de-fingering himself? This was the sex club version of that mission.”

“His report said ‘target approached us after a sexual display’.”

Un-fucking-believable. Is he trying to making Eiji’s life unbearable? “Alright, it’s not my fault he probably doesn’t know what ‘made out’ means.”

“You know, he’d probably be the best dominatrix in the world.”

“I can’t--what?”

“You’re right.” Kai nods. “He’s a guy, so he’d just be a plain . . . dominator. Dom.”

“I don’t understand what this conversation is.” Eiji rubs between this eyebrows. “Weren’t you warning me away from him a few days ago?”

“Look, just because I wouldn’t touch him with a ten foot pole doesn’t mean I can’t speculate,” says Kai, making herself comfortable by shoving her feet onto Eiji’s lap. “He’s got the I-expect-to-be-obeyed-without-question attitude, the power, and the looks--”

“--you’re gay,” Eiji reminds her.

“If I wasn’t, he’d be the type I’d want to fuck,” continues Kai, undaunted. “You know, provided he was someone else. With his genjutsu, he could make your every crazy fantasy come true. Safely. We’re talking gangbangs, weird genitals, blood, kids, animals, tentacles, whatever. Your sick mind is the limit. Damn, why isn’t he a girl?”

“I refuse to think about this,” says Eiji. “I refuse to talk about this. Besides, you’re here to help me study. Teach me something. I don’t remember the last time I went to a lecture.”

* * *

 

Eiji’s missed so many lectures. Entire units of didactic material, actually, so there isn’t a number of study sessions with anyone that’ll help him climb out of the hole he’s in. His only saving grace is that he has excellent chakra control, considering his stamina anyway, and he lacks the typical timidity of most medics. It’s probably a bad thing since it means he’s not scared to dig into lacerations, fractures, burns, and nasty infections. Even if he’s always a little bit scared that he might end up killing someone.

He sets up a personal catch-up schedule and vows to keep up with it until he’s confident he can pass the written part of medical promotion tests. And Itachi proceeds to shit all over it.

Somehow, Captain Crow has decided that he would like medical back up on his teams, and that medical back up is almost always Eiji. It might always be him, for all he knows. That’s the way everyone acts anyway. And considering Eiji’s completed three A-ranked missions in as many weeks, he doesn’t blame them.

“Do you remember the mission at the sex club?” asks Itachi a few weeks later, startling Eiji from some mind-numbing paperwork at ANBU Headquarters.

“Don’t say those words.” Eiji actually gets up and walks around the table to grab Itachi by the shoulders, determined to make the little bastard see the gravity of the situation. “Everyone stopped talking about it after that Hyuuga clansman got caught almost doing it with a Yamanaka kunoichi.”

“That’ll blow over soon,” says Itachi, glancing up at him, then focusing on the report he’s reading. “They never had vaginal intercourse.”

Eiji lets go of his shoulders with a huff. “We talked about this. You’re not allowed to say sex things.”

“I’m the only person in this division who doesn’t say ‘fuck’ at least twice per sentence.”

“And you’re definitely not allowed to say ‘fuck’.”

Itachi looks up, his brows forming a tiny furrow. “Anyway, the toxicology report is back on the cock cage drugs--”

“--you’re making me cry with all this profanity--”

“--and the heroin has been cut with with xaiker dust.”

“. . . That’s weird,” says Eiji, forgetting all banter.

“Toxicology agrees,” says Itachi. “It’s expensive and not even slightly addictive. And it doesn’t seem to enhance the action of opiates.”

“Wouldn’t do for a signature either.”

“A signature?”

“Yeah,” says Eiji. “You know, when cooks add some scents or tastes to their drugs so their customers know what they’re getting. One of the dipshits at the Red Lights district used to cut his with habanero pepper powder and called himself Spice.”

“Huh,” says Itachi. “But xaiker dust is colorless, tasteless, and odorless."

"Weird," repeats Eiji. "But this is Orochimaru we're talking about. He's smuggling this shit on cock cages, which is the most needlessly elaborate shit I ever heard. Where's he even getting them?"

"What do you mean?" 

"Well, it's not like they're common," says Eiji. "It's just not a common fetish. How many guys do you know who'd want to keep their dicks from getting hard?"

"That's brilliant," says Itachi, mostly to himself. He rolls the report back into a scroll. "It's obvious, actually. We'll never get anywhere looking for heroin. We need to find out where the hell Orochimaru got those cock cages."

"I told you to stop saying the words."

"Thank you, Eiji," says Itachi.

"Wow, go back to talking about cock cages." Eiji is not ready to deal with an Itachi who thanks him politely for things.

Itachi does that tiny frown thing of his, then leaves Eiji to his paperwork. 

It takes Eiji way too long to get back to work.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Still wasting time at [my blog](http://www.dynamicallyopposed.com/). Fire Emblem has taken over my life.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I said it was going to be three chapters, but this got too long. Now, it's four.

“Oh shit,” Eiji says when Kai tells him score for the last round of tests. He lifts his head from her shoulder and gazes at the board by the clinic, half-expecting that Kai is playing a nasty joke on him. “I passed. It’s a miracle.”

“Let’s keep this in perspective,” says Kai, pushing him off. “You got the lowest passing score in our group.”

“I know,” says Eiji, sighing deeply. “This must mean every time I guessed, I guessed _right._ I’m _untouchable._ ”

“Or your boyfriend made sure you were graded generously,” says a feminine voice that Eiji only vaguely recognizes.

He looks towards the sound and frowns at a slim girl with brown hair and artful eyeliner. Sunlight glints off the butterfly hair-clip thing she’s using to anchor her forehead protector to her hair. She’s wearing a medic’s white coat over simple slacks and a mesh, but . . .

“Who the fuck are you?” asks Eiji, responding more to her supercilious tone than her actual words, which he barely registered.

“This is Kaisha,” says Kai, stepping closer to him. “She was promoted recently; has been working double shifts at the hospital.”

Eiji squints. He wouldn’t have recognized her if someone taped a exploding to his forehead. Has he really been spending so little time at the hospital?

The girl lets out one of those knowing sniffs that seem to say everything and nothing at all, then walks away from them.

“Wait, my boyfriend?” Eiji asks, but Kai is already dragging him off.

“I can’t believe this shit,” he says later that evening, after he’s well into a six-pack of cheap beer. “You know I can probably afford better than this piss now,” he adds, waving an empty can at Kai. “Three A-ranks and one S-rank last month. Motherfuckers are jealous Itachi doesn’t pick _them._ ”

“Everyone hates a suck-up,” sing-songs Kai.

“I don’t suck up to him!” protests Eiji. “And the _idea_ of him doctoring my test scores . . . wouldn’t I ask for perfect scores on everything?”

“Come on, that wouldn’t be believable,” says Kai. “You mistook the humerus for the radius once.”

“Fuck you; I was _tired._ ” He grunts, throws the empty can at his trash, and the whole thing topples over.

“That stinks,” says Kai, glaring as greenish trashcan fluid spills all over the floor. “You live in a fucking pigsty. Why did I agree to come here?”

“I am fucking Itachi at the earliest opportunity,” says Eiji, perfectly content to ignore the mess for a little longer. “I’m gonna get shit for it anyway; might as well do it.”

“Eiji, I’m not cleaning your apartment again,” says Kai.

“Eh, I’m hiring a cleaning lady.” One of the younger hookers looking for some none-whoring references would probably jump at the chance. “Putting that sugar-daddy money to good use.”

Next day, he remembers to pass by the Red Lights District to look for someone to clean his teeny apartment for an absurdly generous fee, but he buries any ideas about Itachi. He warns himself not to buy into the stupid hype - no matter how much people may fantasize about his and Itachi’s torrid affair, the cold reality is that Itachi remains as distant and sexless as ever. Sometimes, Eiji thinks he imagined the episode where Itachi clumsily propositioned him in the middle of an insomniac crisis. It’s just too far removed from what Itachi's like the rest of the time.

But he still heads to ANBU Headquarters, determined to do _something_ about the injustice of the situation. He strides towards the corner desk that Itachi favors, a narrow square next to a wall that offers excellent view of the entire conference room and two easily-accessible exits, glaring until Itachi looks up from a scroll.

“I don’t want anything higher than a C-rank this month,” he declares loudly enough for any stalkers to hear. “I’m behind on my hospital shifts.”

“Fine,” says Itachi.

Then he goes back to his scroll, leaving Eiji full of bluster and without any target to aim it at. He starts to turn, then changes his mind and sits in front of Itachi. It finally gets the bastard’s attention. Eiji’s proud that he recognizes the faint crease of annoyance that mars his features.

“People are saying you made sure I passed my last round of didactic exams.”

Itachi only stares.

“Doesn’t it bother you?” demands Eiji.

“I haven’t been bothered by what people say about me in years,” says Itachi. “Besides, this idiocy regarding you is hardly the worst rumor going around about me. In fact, it’s almost interesting.”

“Interesting?”

“They’re presuming there’s something you can do in bed that could persuade me to do anything,” says Itachi.

“Huh?”

“No one believes me capable of genuine affection,” says Itachi, “meaning that they’re crediting you sexual prowess with the ability to manipulate me into, somehow, foisting an incompetent medic into our medical teams. At this point, I would have sex with you just to see what the fuss is about.”

Eiji sputters, then flees Headquarters. He’s not going to even pretend there was anything dignified about his exit.

But the conversation refuses to leave his thoughts, even though he should be obsessing with Kai about his hospital placement.

“I know I’m not going anywhere near surgery, since I can’t hold chakra scalpel for more than five minutes,” Kai is complaining, “but I’m gonna die if I end up in toxicology. It is so boring.”

“I’m not going to toxicology because I’m too stupid for it,” says Eiji, frowning at the mountain of white coats in front of him. Not a single one fits.

“And you’re not going into surgery because you couldn’t tell normal vasculature from your asshole,” says Kai.

“Whatever.” He might not be able to label a diagram, but short of the aorta, he could control bleeding from anywhere. That’s not what’s on his mind. “I need a girlfriend.”

“What?”

The medical corps jounin, all seven of them, choose that moment to barge into the locker room. Eiji watches all his fellow chuunin whip into perfect military stances before he remembers he should show some respect as well. He’s not even trying to be an arrogant dipshit, in all honesty. Some things just slip his mind, especially when he’s fixating on his pathetic non-relationship with the most despised ninja in the village.

It turns out he is one of the three chuunin going straight to the surgical floors under Hyuuga Jian, together with that asshole new girl whose name Eiji has already forgotten and some Hyuuga woman he couldn’t pick out of a line-up. Kai is shocked, more than a little jealous, but ultimately happy that Eiji’s getting a shot at jounin rank.

“It’s because of your stamina,” she says later in her apartment. She’s announced that she won’t return to Eiji’s place until his new maid has had at least a week to disinfect and exorcise the perimeter. “You got enough muscle mass for three ninja in you. It’s not fair. You barely keep up with your training.”

Not true. Eiji runs through basic training daily when he’s not active missions because if he’s going to die out in the field, it won’t be because he’s out of chakra. The mistake shinobi make is assuming that exercise is not exercise unless it involves fancy taijutsu. Eiji just runs and lifts weights.

“I was serious about needing a girlfriend,” he says. “I need to de-virginize so when I have sex with Itachi, I can blow his mind.”

“Oh, honey.”

“It’s what he’s expecting now,” says Eiji, cursing the day he let that girl say they’d been together without asking for anything in return.

“If this is about Itachi, who is of the male persuasion, shouldn’t you do your little practice run with another guy?”

“No, he’s gonna be the girl of the relationship.”

“Oh, sweet baby,” says Kai, gazing at him like he’s a particularly dim-witted child. “If we’re going with that stereotype, there’s _nothing_ you can do to be the man in a relationship with Uchiha, Konoha’s Wraith, Hokage’s Go-To Assassin, Itachi.”

“We’ll see about that,” says Eiji. “Take me to a bar.”

Eiji is dimly aware that he’s considered attractive, striking even, but he’s still expecting to be shunned by most women if only because he’s so large. Not the case. The first girl who catches his eye - relatively tall though still a head shorter than him, with long straight hair and silhouette straight out of a porn rag - says yes to his invitation to dance even though he stutters it out like a moron. It’s flattering, he supposes, especially after he lets himself get tipsy.

It’s obvious she’s experienced, and with a taste for shinobi. When Eiji suggest they go “somewhere private”, feeling like an idiot, she smirks and drags him to the goddamned bathroom. Eiji angst about nasty bacteria until she shoves a hand down his pants.

“So how was it?” Kai asks him next day.

“I don’t even remember her name,” admits Eiji, fighting a headache that he won’t heal because he completely deserves it. “I don’t think I ever asked her.”

“I’m sorry, Eiji,” she says. “I should’ve stopped you, but I ran into my ex, I’m not even saying the her name, and I kinda forgot about you and your stupid plan.”

“Settle down, Mom,” he snorts. “It’s not like I’m traumatized.”

In fact, the ordeal was a success. Awkward as it was (and rather embarrassingly quick), sex with another person he can’t even name is still the best fucking thing Eiji has ever felt. It’ll be the same for Itachi, he’s sure. Not that Eiji gets a chance to test the theory.

For once, Itachi listens to him and doesn’t request him for any more missions. The rest of ANBU must still hate him, because they don’t either. Eiji spends the entire month cruising from nervous breakdown to nervous breakdown in the trauma bay. By the end of it, he’s too busy hating Kaisha to even remember Itachi exists most days.

“What did I ever _do_ to her?” he whines to Kai as he slurps on his third milkshake of the day. He’s going through his chakra reserves like a junkie goes through black tar heroin lately.

“She’s just jealous you’re Jian’s favorite,” says Kai. “The clinic is so boring.”

“She’s saying I’m blowing Jian for surgeries. _Jian_. Why is she obsessed with my dick?”

“Now to be fair, she’s not the one who started that rumor,” says Kai. “That was Kaizo because he’s bitter you stole his surgery spot.”

“He can have it,” says Eiji. “I’ve been getting maybe four hours of sleep a night for a month; I am losing my shit.”

“Are you _crying?_ ”

“Maybe?” Eiji sucks on his straw and sniffs. He feels a fine tremor going down his spine. Another soldier pill and they’ll be wheeling his ass to the ICU for detox. “This is no way to live.”

“When’s your next day off?” asks Kai.

“In four hours and ten minutes,” says Eiji. “If I have to go back to the OR, I’m gonna throw up.”

He wakes up next day with no memory of how he got to his house, then almost cries when realizes he wasted sixteen hours of his generous, miraculous, beautiful, two-day weekend. Eiji wants to go back in time and punch his younger self every time he whines about being busy or tired. Now he knows bone-deep exhaustion. Everything before, S-rank missions included, had been child’s play.

Though he wants nothing more than to sleep until the hospital is swallowed by rust and decay, he forces himself to visit the village. He’s lived in Konoha his whole life, but he feels like a goddamned tourist. Chatter unaccompanied by the the hum of monitors sounds unnatural, and the he swears the mid-morning sun is burning the side of his face. He doubts he can even get a sunburn considering his skin is somewhere on the darker side of brown.

Shit-brown, his mother used to say, and there’s an evil asshole he hasn’t thought of in a while.

On a whim, he visits the side of the village that his younger self couldn’t have approached with a ten foot pole. If only that old junkie could see him now, getting shit because an honest-to-hell Hyuuga surgeon thinks he can be a medical jounin. The best thing she ever did for him was overdo it with a batch of bad smack.

He snorts when he spots what looks like a store dedicated entirely to fancy chocolates. The prices on the truffles at the window are absurd, but he still has plenty of money left from those months Itachi decided to drag him along on almost all his missions.

Speaking of the devil, he sees none other than Itachi himself gazing at a row of chocolate-covered strawberries. A cute salesgirl says something to him, and he pulls his long dark hair into a loose ponytail. Without his headband wrapped around his forehead, he could easily pass for some classy rich kid with too much time on his hands.

Eiji decides to say hello, feeling like it’s been a lifetime since he last spoke to prissy little bastard. He can barely remember why he ever hated the guy. As Eiji approaches him, he spots a man with limping the distinct gait of amputee coming towards him from the opposite direction. There’s a fan embroidered at the back of his shirt.

What’s about to happen isn’t obvious right away. Itachi looks at the approaching man and freezes, which probably isn’t obvious to anyone who hasn’t spent an embarrassing number of hours cataloguing his near-invisible quirks. The shop girl greets the new customer with something generic and bubbly, so she clearly isn’t seeing what Eiji sees.

“Captain,” says Eiji, reaching for Itachi’s elbow. He feels the joint locking briefly, the only indication that Itachi didn’t even notice someone coming at him. “We have to go; mission’s waiting.”

Eiji’s heart beats a little smoother when Itachi lets himself be dragged, though he isn’t taking his eyes off the Uchiha amputee, who's staring at Itachi with an unreadable expression. The shop girl starts saying something to salvage her sale, but Eiji throws her a warning look and she finally backs off.

“Itachi,” says the Uchiha in a gravelly voice.

Damn. Just when Eiji thinks he’s got the situation defused.

“Do you regret it?” asks the Uchiha.

“No,” says Itachi.

Impressive, how much disdain he can inject into a single syllable.

“Come on, sir,” says Eiji. Almost like herding a drunk out of a bar.

Itachi doesn’t say anything when they’re outside the shop, which is a small mercy because Eiji has no idea what to say. Or what he’s doing. For lack of anything else to do, he leads Itachi back to his apartment, growing more internally agitated with every passing step. Itachi shouldn’t be following him around like a meek duck. Something isn’t right.

Eiji steals a glance at him and notes nothing besides dark bags under his eyes that almost hide those birthmarks of his. They’re barely a sign of anything, except he knows for a fact that Itachi has suffered at least one bout of severe insomnia.

At Eiji’s apartment, Itachi remains quiet and standing beside him in a deceptively relaxed stance. Eiji stares, at a loss for what to do.

“Captain?”

“What about the mission?” asks Itachi.

“Um . . .” Eiji has two surgeries coming up and Itachi would be a hindrance for both of them. Not that he should be carrying out _any_ missions right now. “Can I get someone for you?” Does Itachi even _have_ anyone - “Hatake Kakashi?”

“He’s not in the village right now,” says Itachi, looking directly at Eiji for the first time since the candy shop.

“Awesome.”

Then Itachi’s hand is on his chest, right over his clavicle, pushing him down on a beanbag chair Eiji’s had since his genin days.

“What gives you the _right?_ ” Itachi hisses, his hand suddenly as tight as a vice. “You think you can show up, stick your nose in my affairs, and I won’t go into your head and grind and _grind_ until you ram a kunai into your own neck to make it stop?”

Eiji’s locked in place like a gazelle hoping a tiger will move on if it plays dead.

The hand’s off his shoulder as quickly as it came, and Itachi’s whirls away from him, panting as though he’s run a mile. Or however many miles it takes him to become exhausted.

“Do I regret it?” He says. “Do I fucking _regret_ it? Why would I? I did _exactly_ what they raised me to do, and now they walk around feeling like victims. The only thing I regret is not killing them.”

Eiji’s afraid to breathe in case it drags Itachi's attention back to him. He wishes Itachi was screaming . . . except what would it matter if someone called for help? Not that they would. It’s not like enraged rants are uncommon this side of the village.

“Itachi.”

“Shut up,” he says, holding his head with his hands. “I’m fine.”

“Do you want to sleep, maybe?” asks Eiji. He has no training for this shit. He doesn’t think anyone does. “Sleep like last time?”

“. . . Alright.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun fact: I almost accidentally deleted this after finishing the first draft.
> 
> [My blog](http://www.dynamicallyopposed.com/) is here, now with adds. Go over there and look around, comment, and click on adds if you're interested. But only occasionally and if you're *really* interested, otherwise the Google gods will read any clicks as spam and ban me :( 
> 
> Mostly, you can help out by driving traffic to my ramblings. I won't be making doctor money until July, then Sallie Mae is coming for her money lol.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's the final chapter. I thought I'd never finish a fic again!!! I cut out a subplot, but I don't even care. It's complete!

Itachi fights sleep like a cat fights a bath, except his claws are way more terrifying. Eiji sighs as he goes under, then takes him to the bedroom and dumps him on the bed. His head lands on the pillow at an odd angle, confirming that he’s as close as can be to a coma without actually being in one. Eiji arranges him into a more comfortable position, then removes his sandals. He notes that his toes seem fragile, then frowns because why the hell wouldn’t they be? 

Out of habit, he checks Itachi’s vitals. And groans. 

High blood pressure, not holy-shit-get-me-IV-antihypertensives high, but still _high_ , especially for someone as young and fit as Itachi. More like I’m-so-stressed-I’m-gonna-cry high. Eiji’s expected in the operating room in five hours, not that he feels like he’s been out of the hospital for more than a lunch break. He does some quick math on his head, thankful that Itachi is one of the few ninja who doesn’t care about having a predictable schedule, and works out that Itachi’s on one of his two-day weekends. Second and fourth week of every month, barring emergencies. 

“Fuck me,” Eiji tells the digital clock on his bedside table.

The responsible thing to do would be rush to the Tower, yell until someone high-ranked is willing to talk to him, then inform them that Itachi threatened to kill him, seriously threatened to kill him, for no reason. Oh, and by the way, he’s losing his fucking mind.

Eiji doesn’t know what would happen then, but Itachi might never see the light of day again. Kai would call him a moron, but he heads to the hospital instead, praying he can convince anyone to cover for him.

He finds Kaisha at the back of the ER, cradling a cigarette with one hand and covering her eyes with the other. She hasn’t worn a butterfly clip for a while.

“Hey,” starts Eiji.

“Fuck off.”

“I’m good, thanks,” says Eiji. “I was wondering if you could maybe cover for me tonight. And tomorrow.”

“You cannot be fucking serious.” She won’t even look at him.

“There’s an amputation and a tumor resection in it for you,” says Eiji. 

“All because your boyfriend came to visit you.”

“How the fuck do you know—” Eiji pauses. “I mean yeah, that’s exactly what’s happening; a total fuckfest, not that it’s any of your business.”

“It is if you’re bailing on the team because of it,” hisses Kaisha, finally deigning to look at him. So she can glare like she’s about to unhinge her jaw and eat him whole. “Why do people keep just handing you things?”

“Alright,” says Eiji. He doesn’t have time to argue this shit when he has Itachi in a medically-induced (by him) vegetative state in his bedroom. “I get it. You hate me. Now you have to figure out what’s more important to you; cockblocking me, or swooping in to take my place while Jian’s promising to have my dick on a platter.” 

“I can do both,” says Kaisha.

“No, I don’t think so.” Eiji sighs and shrugs at her. “If I try to ask Jian for more time, he’ll tell me to go fuck myself and be at the OR at 21:00 hours, but I just don’t show up . . .”

Kaisha’s glare doesn’t soften, but she doesn’t argue with him either.

“Anyway, I owe you one,” says Eiji, and because he doesn’t ever know when to quit it, he adds, “I’ll let Itachi know how helpful you’ve been.”

With one potential catastrophe handled (kind of—Jian might still send the inquisition after him), Eiji rushes back home. He considers stopping at the medical library for anything they have on insomnia, but that doesn’t fit with the picture of a weekend long booty-call he’s hoping people will accept without question. They’re not that stupid.

Itachi’s right where Eiji left him, though his blood pressure has already improved a little bit. He doesn’t so much as twitch as Eiji fusses over him. Anyone could waltz in a murder him, but Eiji guesses they’re too scared of him to even try. If Eiji tells anyone about this, that terrifying mystique will shatter and Itachi will have to sleep with one eye open. In the unlikely possibility that the brass doesn’t just cut its losses and kills him.

At the very least, he should try and talk to Itachi about what’s happening. Kai would say that the bastard has done nothing to earn Eiji’s loyalty, but . . . but. Eiji sighs, rubs his face with his hands, and goes to make something to eat. Better not examine what’s driving him to go to such lengths for Itachi.

The time for his surgery comes as Eiji slurps ramen in front of his old TV. He doesn’t relax until at least an hour after, when he’s sure that things haven’t just backlogged at the hospital. At least Jian has let his absence pass without question.

At midnight, Eiji goes to check on Itachi. He stops at the door to his room when he sees that Itachi has shifted to a fetal position. Itachi’s just sleeping now, which means that any wrong move will wake him up, and Eiji’s not ready to face him yet. He’s probably never gonna be ready to face him.

Eiji squeezes his large frame onto his couch with a stray thought for whatever assholes might be peeping on his house. Fuck them. Let them credit the situation to Itachi’s overall weirdness. In the middle of the night, he gives up and goes to his bed. Itachi shifts when Eiji plops down, but at least he doesn’t immediately go for Eiji’s throat.

“Just fucking sleep,” Eiji says after Itachi is stiff for a good half-a-minute. 

The rising sun wakes him up next morning. He’s alone in bed.

Eiji sits up abruptly, gaze scanning the room as though he expects Itachi to find Itachi perched on the walls like a spider. He falls back on the bed, head pounding. Eventually, he works up the nerve to go to the kitchen, praying that Itachi turned chickenshit upon waking up and fled.

Of course, that’s not what happened. Itachi simply made breakfast.

Eiji sits in front of him, struggling to meet Itachi’s dark eyes even though he’s not the one who fucked up. He picks a piece of toast and is relieved to find the natto bland. 

“Is it as bad as I remember?” asks Itachi.

“Depends on how you feel about threatening to _kill me._ ”

Itachi at least bothers to look away for a second. “You were the one who got involved.”

“Oh, get the fuck out of my apartment.”

Itachi has the gall to look wounded before standing up. Eiji imagines punching that stupid face in, then grabs Itachi’s arm as he tries to walk around him.

“No, wait.” Eiji sighs, but doesn’t let go. “Sit down, I need to figure out . . . what I’m gonna do.”

“You should report me,” says Itachi. 

“For the future reference, this conversation should be going _thanks for not selling my ass out, Eiji, I deserve it, let me blow you to show my appreciation_.” 

“Is that the most creative thing you can think to extort out of me?”

“You’re the one who had a meltdown, so don’t get superior with me.” Eiji gestures at the chair. “Sit down; I have questions. What the hell happened?”

“I tried to sleep,” Itachi says as he sits back down, “but something woke me up every time.”

“Something?”

“I don’t what it was?”

“Physically, what happened?” says Eiji. “Work with me.”

“I don’t know how to describe it,” admits Itachi. “It was like an attack was coming every time. Not literally, just like something inside me was trying to choke me.”

“Any headaches or hallucinations while you were still sleeping on the regular?”

“No.”

Eiji’s so behind that he doesn’t remember the specific questions he’s supposed to be asking about this. It’s not like it’s a common disease because fucking nothing about Itachi can be simple. Fuck it.

“Clearly, you have PTSD,” says Eiji. There’s no need to be chasing unicorn zebras when the answer is obvious. “About the thing with your family.”

“No,” says Itachi. “I’m used to that.”

“Well, whatever it is, you need to talk about it.” That’s part of it, Eiji hopes. He vaguely remembers something about rewired stress responses in the brain that he doesn’t even care about because there’s not a surgery for it.

“With you?” asks Itachi, and that douchey edge has crawled back into his voice.

“Oh, I’m sorry. It’s there a line of people ready to listen to your bullshit I’m not aware of?” A counsellor seeing this would cry, but Eiji’s a surgeon. He’s gonna need a counsellor himself by the end of the conversation.

“I killed my cousin,” says Itachi.

“Uh, I was starting out as a medic when the . . . thing with your family.” Eiji takes a calming breath, berating himself for not being as outwardly calm as Itachi. “There were a lot of . . . people who went septic, others who refused treatment. You killed a lot of your cousins is what I’m trying to say.”

“I mean a specific cousin, a couple of weeks before that,” says Itachi, somehow managing to sound annoyed. “I drowned him, made it look like suicide.”

“I’m . . . sorry?” says Eiji. Being a ninja, it would be hypocritical to go all up in arms about murder.

“He asked me to do it; made me promise I wouldn’t let our clan start another war.”

“On the bright side,” says Eiji, “mission accomplished?”

“Does it make me a monster?” asks Itachi, almost wistful. “Shisui keeps me up at night, but I can’t bring myself to be truly sorry about the rest of it, except . . .” Itachi shakes his head and stands up. “I have to get to work.”

“We’re done, I guess,” says Eiji, satisfied that Itachi is back to himself. For now. “Just, find me when you need help sleeping, alright?”

“Yes, thank you,” says Itachi. “I do feel rested.”

“By the way, I told everyone you came to me for a booty call—sex, I mean.”

“I know what a booty call is,” says Itachi. “You’re the only one who thinks I’m some kind of . . . mental eunuch.” 

“Defensive mechanism, alright?” Eiji considers the fucked-upness of the situation and decides it can’t get any worse. “Unless . . . to quote a weird douchebag who came on to me once, would you like to have sex with me?”

Itachi smiles. No, he _grins_. For an instant, it takes over his whole face and makes him look his age. "Ask me next time, when I'm not late."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's like a million typos in this, I bet. I need a beta reader. How does one go about getting one of those?
> 
> In other news, I saw Dawn of Justice and it was [awful](http://www.dynamicallyopposed.com/2016/03/dawn-of-justice-i-dont-know-what-i.html).

**Author's Note:**

> Still messing around at [my blog](http://www.dynamicallyopposed.com/).


End file.
